How to Steal a Picasso
- Full Length Play, Comedy, Contemporary
- 3M, 2F
- ISBN: TRW-12492
The Smith family doesn't agree on much, but when their son Johnny comes home for the first time in four years, they reluctantly reconvene to celebrate the father (a failed painter) winning the Yoko Ono Lifetime Achievement Award for Non-Objective Art.
Description
- Full Length Play
- Comedy
- Time Period: Contemporary
- Target Audience: Adult
- Performance Group:
- Community Theatre, Blackbox / Second Stage /Fringe Groups
The Smith family doesn't agree on much, but when their son Johnny comes home for the first time in four years, they reluctantly reconvene to celebrate the father (a failed painter) winning the Yoko Ono Lifetime Achievement Award for Non-Objective Art. In fact, tonight, Sean (the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono) is to come to their house and give the father the award personally. But when a Picasso goes missing from the nearby Detroit Institute for the Arts, the family is suspected and Johnny's homecoming takes a dramatic turn.
Soon, it's discovered that the missing Picasso and the father's prestigious award could both be part of a cruel hoax that forces the family to question the purpose of art in this modern pixilated world where everything is copyrighted and art is no more than a commodity.
REVIEWS:
"A farce with an edge!"
The Kansas City Star
"The energy of a pinball machine, all flashing lights and erratic chimes and emotions that pivot with the stroke of a flipper... How to Steal a Picasso is unapologetically zany, but Downs finds time to toss a few telling contradictions into the fray."
Kansas City Pitch
"Amid all the crazy plot turns, Downs finds opportunities to make valid statements about our perceptions of art, delusional self-styled 'artists' and how art has lost any meaning beyond its value as a commodity."
The Kansas City Star
"How to Steal a Picasso keeps the audience laughing... It maintains its humor in what the author calls 'farcical reality' all the way through the fast two-act show that is still able to make its serious points."
Broadway World
"How to Steal a Picasso is a comedy that correctly pinpoints this era in which capitalism determines the value of art. It depicts Otto and his family crying out for true art in a world full of consumption. Their choices raise enlightened questions about the original value of art."
New Culture, Seoul Korea
Characters
- Casting: 3M, 2F
